What Mass Killers Want—And How to Stop Them

Rampage shooters crave the spotlight, and we should do everything possible to deprive them of it.

After each awful episode, we suffer from the same misconceptions, says writer Ari Schulman in a discussion with WSJ's Gary Rosen. To stop the spectacle of mass killings, we need to keep them from being spectacles. Photo: Reuters

By

Ari N. Schulman

Nov. 8, 2013 7:32 p.m. ET

Public shootings have become a familiar American spectacle in recent years, and two more occurred in recent weeks. The details are still unfolding, but so far these episodes seem to fit the general pattern. At Los Angeles International Airport, a young man entered a public area and started firing. Three days later, in the midst of intense media coverage of the first event, another young man did the same at a shopping mall in suburban New Jersey. One penned a note beforehand about his actions, the other a manifesto. Only the L.A. shooter appears to have meant to kill others, but both apparently planned to die in highly publicized blazes of terror.

Someday soon, we are likely to awake to news of yet another rampage shooting, one that perhaps will rival the infamous events at Columbine, Virginia Tech, Aurora and Newtown. As unknowable as the when and who and where of the next tragedy is the certainty that there will be one, and of what will follow: The tense initial hours as we watch the body count tick higher. The ashen-faced news anchors with pictures of stricken families. Stories and images of the fatal minutes. Reports on the shooter's journals and manifestos. A weary speech from the president. Debates about guns and mental health.

Underlying this grim national ritual, and the pronouncements from all quarters that mass shootings are "senseless," is the disturbing feeling that these acts are beyond our understanding. As the criminologist and forensic psychiatrist Park Dietz writes, we talk about these acts as if they arise from "alien forces." So we focus our efforts on thwarting future mass shooters—catching them through the mental health system, or making it harder for them to get guns, or making it easier for others with guns to stop them. Some enterprising minds have even suggested that schoolchildren be trained to gang-rush them.

But the criminologists and psychologists who study mass killings aren't so baffled. While news reports often define mass shootings solely by body count, researchers instead look at qualitative traits like the psychology of the perpetrator, his relationship to the victims and how he carries out the crime. Building on Dr. Dietz's seminal 1986 article on mass murder in the Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine, researchers have used these characteristics to develop a taxonomy of mass killing outside of warfare. The major types include serial, cult, gang, family and spree killings.

But it is another kind that dominates the headlines: the massacre or rampage shooting. Whereas the other types of mass murder usually occur in multiple incidents or in a concealed manner, massacres occur as a single, typically very public event.

In 2004, Paul E. Mullen, then the director of the Victorian Institute of Forensic Mental Health, wrote an illuminating study based in part on his personal interviews with rampage shooters who survived their acts. He notes that rampage shootings tend to follow a definite pattern, what he called a "program for murder and suicide." The shooter, almost always a young man, enters an area filled with many people. He is heavily armed. He may begin by targeting a few specific victims, but he soon moves on to "indiscriminate killings where just killing people is the prime aim." He typically has no plan for escape and kills himself or is killed by police.

Among the more pervasive myths about massacre killers is that they simply snap. In fact, Dr. Mullen and others have found that rampage shooters usually plan their actions meticulously, even ritualistically, for months in advance. Like serial killers, massacre killers usually don't have impulsive personalities; they tend to be obsessive and highly organized. Survivors typically report that the shooters appear to be not enraged but cold and calculating.

Central to the massacre pattern is the killer's self-styling. James L. Knoll IV, the director of forensic psychiatry at the State University of New York's Upstate Medical University, describes in a 2010 article how perpetrators often model themselves after commandos, wearing military dress or black clothing. Investigators usually find they had a lifelong fascination with weaponry, warfare, and military and survivalist culture. Their methodical comportment during the act is part of this styling.

Contrary to the common assumption, writes author Michael D. Kelleher in his 1997 book "Flash Point," mass killers are "rarely insane, in either the legal or ethical senses of the term," and they don't typically have the "debilitating delusions and insidious psychotic fantasies of the paranoid schizophrenic." Dr. Knoll affirms that "the literature does not reflect a strong link with serious mental illness."

ENLARGE

Instead, massacre killers are typically marked by what are considered personality disorders: grandiosity, resentment, self-righteousness, a sense of entitlement. They become, says Dr. Knoll, " 'collectors of injustice' who nurture their wounded narcissism." To preserve their egos, they exaggerate past humiliations and externalize their anger, blaming others for their frustrations. They develop violent fantasies of heroic revenge against an uncaring world.

Whereas serial killers are driven by long-standing sadistic and sexual pleasure in inflicting pain, massacre killers usually have no prior history of violence. Instead, writes Eric W. Hickey, dean of the California School of Forensic Studies, in his 2009 book "Serial Murderers and Their Victims," massacre killers commit a single and final act in which violence becomes a "medium" to make a " 'final statement' in or about life." Fantasy, public expression and messaging are central to what motivates and defines massacre killings.

Mass shooters aim to tell a story through their actions. They create a narrative about how the world has forced them to act, and then must persuade themselves to believe it. The final step is crafting the story for others and telling it through spoken warnings beforehand, taunting words to victims or manifestos created for public airing.

What these findings suggest is that mass shootings are a kind of theater. Their purpose is essentially terrorism—minus, in most cases, a political agenda. The public spectacle, the mass slaughter of mostly random victims, is meant to be seen as an attack against society itself. The typical consummation of the act in suicide denies the course of justice, giving the shooter ultimate and final control.

We call mass shootings senseless not only because of the gross disregard for life but because they defy the ordinary motives for violence—robbery, envy, personal grievance—reasons we can condemn but at least wrap our minds around. But mass killings seem like a plague dispatched from some inhuman realm. They don't just ignore our most basic ideas of justice but assault them directly.

The perverse truth is that this senselessness is just the point of mass shootings: It is the means by which the perpetrator seeks to make us feel his hatred. Like terrorists, mass shooters can be seen, in a limited sense, as rational actors, who know that if they follow the right steps they will produce the desired effect in the public consciousness.

Part of this calculus of evil is competition. Dr. Mullen spoke to a perpetrator who "gleefully admitted that he was 'going for the record.' " Investigators found that the Newtown shooter kept a "score sheet" of previous mass shootings. He may have deliberately calculated how to maximize the grotesqueness of his act.

Many other perpetrators pay obsessive attention to previous massacres. There is evidence for a direct line of influence running through some of the most notorious shooters—from Columbine in 1999 to Virginia Tech in 2007 to Newtown in 2012—including their explicit references to previous massacres and calls to inspire future anti-heroes.

Aside from the wealth of qualitative evidence for imitation in massacre killings, there are also some hard numbers. A 1999 study by Dr. Mullen and others in the Archives of Suicide Research suggested that a 10-year outbreak of mass homicides had occurred in clusters rather than randomly. This effect was also found in a 2002 study by a group of German psychiatrists who examined 132 attempted rampage killings world-wide. There is a growing consensus among researchers that, whether or not the perpetrators are fully aware of it, they are following what has become a ready-made, free-floating template for young men to resolve their rage and express their sense of personal grandiosity.

Whatever the witch's brew of influences that produced this grisly script, treating mass killings as a kind of epidemic or contagion largely frees us from having to understand the particular causes of each act. Instead, we can focus on disrupting the spread.

There is a precedent for this approach in dealing with another form of violence: suicides. A 2003 study led by Columbia University psychiatrist Madelyn Gould found "ample evidence" of a suicide contagion effect, fed by reports in the media. A 2011 study in the journal BMC Public Health found, unsurprisingly, that this effect is especially strong for novel forms of suicide that receive outsize attention in the press.

Some researchers have even put the theory to the test. In 1984, a rash of suicides broke out on the subway system in Vienna. As the death toll climbed, a group of researchers at the Austrian Association for Suicide Prevention theorized that sensational reporting was inadvertently glorifying the suicides. Three years into the epidemic, the researchers persuaded local media to change their coverage by minimizing details and photos, avoiding romantic language and simplistic explanations of motives, moving the stories from the front page and keeping the word "suicide" out of the headlines. Subway suicides promptly dropped by 75%.

This approach has been recommended by numerous public health and media organizations world-wide, from the U.K., Australia, Norway and Hong Kong to the U.S., where in 2001 a similar set of reporting guidelines was released jointly by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institute of Mental Health and the surgeon general. It is difficult to say whether these guidelines have helped, since journalists' adherence to them has been scattered at best, but they might still serve as a basis for changing the reporting of massacres.

How might journalists and police change their practices to discourage mass shootings? First, they need to do more to deprive the killer of an audience:

Never publish a shooter's propaganda. Aside from the act itself, there is no greater aim for the mass killer than to see his own grievances broadcast far and wide. Many shooters directly cite the words of prior killers as inspiration. In 2007, the forensic psychiatrist Michael Welner told "Good Morning America" that the Virginia Tech shooter's self-photos and videotaped ramblings were a "PR tape" that was a "social catastrophe" for NBC News to have aired.

Hide their names and faces. With the possible exception of an at-large shooter, concealing their identities will remove much of the motivation for infamy.

Don't report on biography or speculate on motive. While most shooters have had difficult life events, they were rarely severe, and perpetrators are adept at grossly magnifying injustices they have suffered. Even talking about motive may encourage the perception that these acts can be justified.

Police and the media also can contain the contagion of mass shootings by withholding or embargoing details:

Minimize specifics and gory details. Shooters are motivated by infamy for their actions as much as by infamy for themselves. Details of the event also help other troubled minds turn abstract frustrations into concrete fantasies. There should be no play-by-play and no descriptions of the shooter's clothes, words, mannerisms or weaponry.

No photos or videos of the event. Images, like the security camera photos of the armed Columbine shooters, can become iconic and even go viral. Just this year, the FBI foolishly released images of the Navy Yard shooter in action.

Finally, journalists and public figures must remove the dark aura of mystery shrouding mass killings and create a new script about them.

Talk about the victims but minimize images of grieving families. Reports should shift attention away from the shooters without magnifying the horrified reactions that perpetrators hope to achieve.

Decrease the saturation. Return the smaller shootings to the realm of local coverage and decrease the amount of reporting on the rest. Unsettling as it sounds, treating these acts as more ordinary crimes could actually make them less ordinary.

Tell a different story. There is a damping effect on suicide from reports about people who considered it but found help instead. Some enterprising reporters might find similar stories to tell about would-be mass shooters who reconsidered.

Rampage shootings are fed by many other sources that also must be addressed, of course. Many shooters have suffered bullying, which inflicts a sense of powerlessness that their actions aim to overcome. Some (though not most) shooters have had prior contact with mental health services, and many give recognizable warnings beforehand to friends, family or teachers. Institutionally and individually, we must learn to take these signs seriously and report them to authorities. Massacres also would not be nearly so lethal without the widespread availability of guns and high-capacity magazines designed more for offense than for defense.

But, guns aside, these factors are more or less perennial problems of human life and cannot, alone, bear the blame for rampage shootings. In coverage of these events, the focus on insanity particularly risks playing into the need of potential future shooters to convince themselves that the world rejects them, rather than the other way around. The minority who really are psychotic, or just act impulsively, are even more likely to draw their ideas from the cultural ether.

Even in the U.S., with our fierce commitment to a free and open press, there are precedents for voluntary media restrictions. Courts and journalists usually recognize an overriding public interest in protecting the privacy of sexual assault victims and minors involved in crimes, and sometimes even the reputations of the accused. Safety, too, can trump the public right to know. Few media outlets would publish the instructions for making a bomb. Promulgating the template for rampage shootings is in similar need of restriction.

In the days after the Newtown shooting, the blogger Rod Dreher pointed to the closing lines of Albert Camus's "The Stranger," about an alienated young man who commits a senseless murder: "As if that blind rage had washed me clean, rid me of hope…For everything to be consummated, for me to feel less alone, I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate."

The massacre killer chooses to believe it is not he but the world that is filled with hatred—and then he tries to prove his dark vision by making it so. If we can deprive him of the ability to make his internal psychodrama a shared public reality, if we can break this ritual of violence and our own ritual response, then we might just banish these dreadful and all too frequent acts to the realm of vile fantasy.

Mr. Schulman is the executive editor of the New Atlantis: A Journal of Technology and Society.

Corrections & Amplifications The shooting at Columbine happened in 1999. An earlier version incorrectly said it was in 1997.

Re: "the focus on insanity particularly risks playing into the need of potential future shooters to convince themselves that the world rejects them"

Obamacare mandates mental health coverage. This may intensify the focus on insanity, potentially worsening conditions out of which mass killers rise. If so, once again government "help" will unintentionally create more harm (not to mention increasing costs to insurers and society).

QUOTE: typically marked by ... grandiosity, resentment, self-righteousness, a sense of entitlement. They become ... " 'collectors of injustice' who nurture their wounded narcissism." ... They exaggerate past humiliations and externalize their anger, blaming others for their frustrations.

When cities and states wanted to ban hand guns: The Catholic Supreme Court upheld the right to bear arms. And today we are turning into a cannibal country. The group of Catholics want the country and the constitution to turn back to the days of yore - when you had to have a gun to defend the country. Firing squads were used then: guilty and you are shot. Today we have 911, a modern army, police and state police, national guard: so there is no need for hand guns - or how about a gun that fires one bullet at a time, except for congressional approved police, military etc. When people are killed, we don't see the bloody faces, the brains scattered around, the missing eyes or limbs - no we see a Church service, some tears, and of course the killer gets a psychiatric/medical background check or has adhd, and didn't take his/her medicine - and then on top of that we all know the person will get life in prison. The death penalty means appeal, after appeal (due to pro life) which makes such cases expensive ... and eventually the killer will live a life of tax freedom, no income taxes either. No guns: No killing. One gun that shoots one bullet at a time, so you can kill one person at a time unless you can reload fast, just in time for security to put an end to a potential massacre ... don't you think.

"....grandiosity, resentment, self-righteousness, a sense of entitlement. They become, says Dr. Knoll, " 'collectors of injustice' who nurture their wounded narcissism." To preserve their egos, they exaggerate past humiliations and externalize their anger, blaming others for their frustrations...."

Some people use their public position to inflame these sentiments in others while actively encouraging people to action with violent metaphors such as "get in their face", "if they bring a knife, then you bring a gun", "reward our friends and punish our enemies", all the while dehumanizing their opponents with terms like "terror!sts" and "hostage takers" who want to "burn down the house".

What the author quite negligently left vague is that the above psychological profile is a necessary but not sufficient condition for one to be a rampage killer.

So many people, especially teenagers, go around saving up resentment like a bank account. Let's do some math. Wiki answers claims there are 21,038,989 teenagers in the US. Let's assume half male, about 10.5 million. Let's assume only twenty percent fit this profile of being victimized by the system. About two million, conservatively.

There were a total of 137 fatal school shootings since 1980 (see slate dot com). That means in over three decades, 137 of these teenagers went postal. About four a year. Since every year some become teenagers and others leave that bracket, we are talking about 4 of about 2 million, or .000002, or .0002% of those who fit this psychological profile. The exact number does not matter here, only the order of magnitude.

The profile is normal for a good portion of adolescent males. A tiny tiny fraction of those who fit the profile commit heinous acts. Even being bullied has not been tied to those who commit these atrocities.

You can go around blaming media for inflaming the issue by using violent terms, and I could counter by blaming those who express fear of these killers and therefore empower them. But the truth is that there is a tiny portion of humanity that does this stuff. To go after a group that fits a necessary but insufficient condition would be to persecute a large group of people who already suffer from a persecution complex.

Let's just not glorify or sensationalize these acts (the only thing the author gets right), so that those who are looking for a noisy end aren't attracted to this method.

PW: Nobody is calling for government censorship. The author is advocating that the media exercise a degree of self-imposed, professional restraint -- as they do in several other areas mentioned (such as withholding the names of victims of sexual assault, etc.).

" shooters have had prior contact with mental health services... we must learn to take these signs seriously and report them to authorities. Massacres also would not be nearly so lethal without the widespread availability of guns and high-capacity magazines designed more for offense than for defense."

You had me until this point.

Many on this board have been calling for a non-glorification of rampage killers for years. We don't need a psychiatrist to tell us that fame fuels these acts.

Screening young mental health patients for a tiny number of possible rampage killers, in effect making mental health workers responsible for protecting their careers by erring on the side of caution, is deplorable. A vast number of young adults would be stigmatized and have their lives ruined. In fact, this could lead to a higher number of violent acts later in life.

Furthermore, the number of rampage killers is tiny compared to criminals in general, and firearms are used much more often for defensive reasons than offensively by society. A large capacity magazine may be the only thing keeping one alive when facing multiple attackers. (Such situations are NOT often covered by the media).

No, the key, touched upon by the author, is changing the narrative. Not only should the name, motive and agony caused by the shooter not be publicized but, as some of us have written before, the shooter should be portrayed as a helpless, immature child who only deserves pity and disgust. That will work to shut the fountain off.

Does anyone think the present administration is not aware of all this? The administration aided by its counterpart in Congress plays these acts up, in fact exaggerates them, as soon as there is a whisper that something may have happened. As many of us have been saying all along, this promotes copycat crimes. And it falls into their gun grabbing agenda.

It all comes down to what has been understood all along: We have ways of reducing the frequency of these rare but high profile crimes. But politics gets in the way.

The article is ridiculous and the gun laws in this country are pure lunacy. Handing out military assault weapons to any idiot that wants one is the epitome of stupid. This is supposed to be a civilized society that we live in, not the OK Corral, but as long as the NRA has its way, this country will resemble the countries in the Middle East where a bombing an hour and everyone armed with AK 47s , rpgs, ieds, bazookas, and mortars creates the madness that La Pierre and the gun companies seem to be shooting for in America. A quick return to the Middle Ages or worse. That the WSJ would publish such tripe is indicative of just how this newspaper , once a leading financial journal, has evolved into a right wing comic book.

Sorry for your ignorance. You can't buy military assault rifles in the US. You did not know that. Military versions are fully automatic: one trigger pull = continuous fire. Civilian-purchasable weapons are different: one trigger pull = one shot. Unfortunately, if we reduce it to one trigger pull = 0 shots, it is a toy and not a weapon.

Switzerland: all males are conscripted in the military, and all are *required* to take their truly military weapons home with them. Switzerland has one of the lowest murder rates in the world: 0.7 per 100,000.

Military assault weapons are not "handed out" to anyone, and the vast majority of people who own semi-automatic rifles could hardly be described as idiots. Furthermore, all of the weapons you mention in your rant are illegal,very difficult to get, and have never been advocated for ownership by the NRA. As an Endowment member who reads everything we publish, I have NOT ONCE heard the NRA encourage ownership of illegal weapons. There is not one shred of truth in anything you said in your post, which renders it a worthless rant unworthy of serious consideration. That said, you might find an opening on one of the MSNBC spectacles that they call journalism.

This is a great article. It is high time the mainstream media recognize that they are a major reason for these horrific shootings.

I must, however, take exception with one statement that Mr. Schulman makes. when he states that "Massacres also would not be nearly so lethal without the widespread availability of guns and high-capacity magazines designed more for offense than for defense."

Here he in completely off base. Speaking as a certified firearms safety instructor, I can attest that study after study has shown no correlation between magazine capacity and lethality. As evidence, I reference the Columbine shooting, which occurred during a ban on these magazines, and a quote from the study performed for the U.S. Department of Justice on the 1994 Firearms Ban which concluded that "...there has been no discernible reduction in the lethality and injuriousness of gun violence, based on indicators like the percentage of gun crimes resulting in death or the share of gunfire incidents resulting in injury, as we might have expected had the ban reduced crimes with ... Large Capacity Magazines."

Many have tried banning firearms and there components to no avail. Lets take away what the killers really want.

First, that act only banned production. It did nothing to address all the tons of weapons, clips and ammo that were already produced. It expired after ten years becasue it was a flawed bill with no teeth. It wasn't designed to work.

Just because Congress poorly executes something doesn't mean it won't or shouldn't work.

We should try to stick to facts. In Columbine, not only were the magazines banned, but the Firearms that at least one of those loonies was using was a 10 rounder. Second, the loonies were not legal to have the guns, yet obtained them. And third, the CDC report of 2003, the DOJ report of 2004, the National Academies of Science summary of 2013 and MANY MORE have found ZERO correlation with these and Mass Killing.

I stick to my premise. Rather than sacrifice ANY freedom, lets take away what the loonies want. FREE MEDIA COVERAGE.

Schulman’s article is childish. The public will always demand to know what happened in mass murder events, and one way or another the public will get that information unless we shut down the free press. That’s not about to happen. Any news source that voluntarily suppressed information the way Schulman recommends would be suspected of doing the same with respect to any other kind of news.

What we need from the press to combat mass murder is less suppression, or at least less omission, of information, not more. Initial news reports almost always leave out information about how mass killers got their weapons. The only counter-example I can think of was the recent New Jersey mall shooting, which actually wasn’t a mass shooting, although it could easily have been. How the shooter or killer got the weapons should be in the second paragraph of initial reports.

Next, in the third paragraphs, initial reports should focus on the people who supplied the weapons. They should be questioned concerning what they could or should have done differently. And manufacturers, sellers, and legislators should be questioned concerning what they think could or should have been done to prevent the killer from acquiring the weapons.

Another thing usually left out of the news reports on mass killings is the cost. Sure, the victims, dead or not, should be mentioned, and survivors affected by the shooting (such as Gabby Giffords) should be talked about. But the dollars and cents are never mentioned. Each human life lost, if evaluated by a jury, is worth millions of dollars. The total cost of Sandy Hook must be in the billions. Yet the gun manufacturers and sellers go right on distributing deadly weapons to anyone who wants them, and the laws don’t exact punishment on individuals who allow mass murderers to acquire their weapons. A public aware of these costs would become aroused enough to actually do something, individually or through their legislators, to keep mass murderers from getting weapons.

Another claim Schulman makes is equally ridiculous. If any of the recent mass killers were not insane, the definition of “insanity” needs to be revised. The shooters, like the Aurora theater shooter, may not meet the legal definition of insanity, but in any reasonable understanding of the word, these people are insane. To claim they are not is to say we can’t keep them from acquiring the weapons they use to carry out their insane plans. That won’t do.

"Instead, massacre killers are typically marked by what are considered personality disorders: grandiosity, resentment, self-righteousness, a sense of entitlement. They become, says Dr. Knoll, " 'collectors of injustice' who nurture their wounded narcissism." To preserve their egos, they exaggerate past humiliations and externalize their anger, blaming others for their frustrations. They develop violent fantasies of heroic revenge against an uncaring world."

Your self-belief that you are more widely-read, smarter and more knowledgeable than anyone else “on the planet”. Such a condition of grandiose narcissism would make you obsessively paranoid, excessively vindictive.

"Your self-belief that you are more widely-read, smarter and more knowledgeable than anyone else “on the planet”. Such a condition of grandiose narcissism would make you obsessively paranoid, excessively vindictive."

I knew Barrie would way in on this. Hey, Barrie, why don't you board one of those executive jets you claim you own and come over here and show us the error of your ways? Oh, your wife has you cleaning out the garage. At least she can find some use in you.

President Obama is sadly mistaken on many things David, but I'm not sure your comment is helpful to the conservative cause. Mr. Harrop here is an example of one will use your comments against you. I disagree with him, but don't give him 'ammunition'.

Finally, someone with common sense; a reasonable approach to these killing sprees. If only our elected officials could use logic. No amount of gun ban/restrictions will curtail those with an agenda. If we could put ineffort to honestly attack this problem instead of using the deaths to further politician's agenda there might be progress reducing or averting future massacres.

As the article recommends, reduce the media's influence. Whether it be tylenol capsule poisonings, terrorism, mass shootings or others, remove the willing partner "the press" from promoting their own, making money off it all. Even back in the 70's, the press was aware and commented on that terrorism can't really exist without them. As a start, don't watch TV.

“Claims by gun lobbyists that mental illness might instead be the driving factor for gun violence were not sufficiently backed up by the data.”

“The United States, with 88.8 guns per 100 people, had a gun-death rate of 10.2 per 100,000 people. At the other extreme, Japan, with less than one gun (0.6, in fact) for every 100 people, has a gun-death rate of 0.06 per 100,000, and the Netherlands, with 3.9 guns per 100 people, has a gun-death rate of 0.46 per 100,000 people.”

The access to semi automatic weapons - which we didn't have years ago, hasn't helped the situation. Nor has the constant war the Republican party, particularly members of the House, have made on this President (and therefore the stability of our country), which has given birth to societal free floating anxiety.

GW Bush didn't ever lie to Americans. He may have been not a smartest guy in the world, but he honestly believed every word he said. This is why he is not vilified comparatively to one infamous liar, who likes to add "Period." to his lies.

Semi automatic weapons have been available since the 1800's - about the same time that Abraham Lincoln and the Republican party began to fight your Democratic Party and their immoral stance on slavery.

Semi autos came out at the end of the US Civil War that's 150 years .If we had more concealed carry the perps would be afraid to act .The "Six Shooter " revolver carried by the 'Cowboys"shoots everytime you pull the trigger .You are trying to pass off SEMI_AUTO as FULL AUTOMATIC ,but hey that's what they pay you do , to confuse the stupid.

George W. Bush was not treated with the deep disrespect and hatred that Barack Obama, as our first Black President has faced. Democrats followed the Bush administration into Iraq and Afghanistan and backed George Bush - they respected his election. Republicans have behaved very badly and history will not treat the party well for their actions during Obama's two terms. Turn off Fox.

The principled resistance of the Republican House to this president; House Republicans have twice successfully campaigned on the promise to oppose his major initiatives; has taken place over five years in which the incidence of mass killings has declined, not risen.

What has risen; ignored by the press because it contradicts of their beloved narrative; is the tension between the races that this administration was going to Finally lay to rest by the power of its mere existance.

While the article make its point and offers very productive; if overly hopeful; suggestions, the writer manages to walk all the way around this subject without mentioning the most glaringingly obvious element of these incidents; the overwhelming majority take place in artificial venues created by laws and regulations that ensure a safe environment for the killers; GUN FREE ZONES; areas where the victims are disarmed by law and statute, created the perfect, helpless target.

In almost all of these tragedies, Law Enforcement acts primarily as the Historian.

A growing number of Mass shootings have been stopped cold by the presense of armed civilians with Concealed carry permits. Just the possibility of being responded to in kind, denies the killer his greatest ambition; To exercise a god like power over his fellow man.

No one can "Chart the course of a twisted nerve, or a ganglia gone awry", but, we can predict what happens when madness meets determined, armed resistance.

It destroys itself.

Society cannot protect everyone, everywhere, every time.

It CAN Stop the barbaric practice of forbidding its citizens the right to protect themselves.

As usual, a profoundly ignorant remark. As for access to semi automatic firearms, the US government used to give away M1 Garands to people as part of a program to insure that there would be a source of marksmen/women. As far as any "attack" on Obama, he more than deserves it. I suppose you objected to the attacks on Bush. Didn't think so. I find Obama to be the least moral, most divisive, and most destructive person to have ever held the office.

I blame many things for the current state of affairs. Not the least of which is the desire on the part of the press for sensationalism. The glorification of violence in the media and entertainment industry is also a factor. You can watch any number of firearms being pulled and waved in somebody's face for any reason on any night on any channel. That is not reality, but some people become convinced that it is.

"The access to semi automatic weapons - which we didn't have years ago..."

Lie.

Paula's ignorance is simply astounding. Paula does not even know what a semi automatic weapon is. A revolver is semi automatic.

"A semi-automatic, or self-loading, firearm is a weapon that performs all steps necessary to prepare the weapon to fire again after firing—assuming cartridges remain in the weapon's feed device or magazine. Typically, this includes extracting and ejecting the spent cartridge case from the weapon's firing chamber, re-cocking the firing mechanism, and loading a new cartridge into the firing chamber. Although automatic weapons and selective fire firearms do the same tasks, semi-automatic firearms do not automatically fire an additional round until the trigger is released and re-pressed by the person firing the weapon."

"rampage shootings tend to follow a definite pattern… The shooter, almost always a young man, enters an area filled with many people. He is heavily armed."

Wow, some crucially important words missing here:

"The shooter… enters an area filled with many people, all of whom have been disarmed for him by laws prohibiting innocent victims from possessing the tools for effective self-defense…"

This has been the case in EVERY ONE one of the spree shootings in America, with only one exception. Spree shooters don't walk into police stations or gun clubs. Ironically, they HAVE walked into at lest two military installations that have disarmed all their personnel except for thin and ineffective "security" forces.

"..This has been the case in EVERY ONE one of the spree shootings in America, with only one exception..."

Completely falseHere is just a short list from this year alone that proves your claim wrong (there are many others)

July 2013 - Hialeah FL: Shooter Pedro Vargas killed six neighbors in a rampage after setting fire to his apartment complex.April 2013 - Manchester IL: A shooter rocked the small town of Manchester when he killed five, including two children, at a federal housing complex.April 2013 - Federal Way WA : After shooting and killing his girlfriend, a gunman gunned down three more neighbors in an apparent attempt to eliminate all witnesses.March 2013 - Herkimer Co NY: Kurt Myers, 64, shot six people, killing four, before holing up in an abandoned building.

Buried deep in the article, but nonetheless clearly stated, is that the availability of guns has a significant effect on the lethality of these people's intentions and behaviors; and that controlling the availability of firearms is an important measure in reducing these incidents.

The writer has otherwise made a number of confusing statements.

He has conflated the concepts of legal insanity with severe and potentially dangerous psychiatric disorders. The definition of legal insanity is extremely limited to the idea that the perpetrator essentially didn't know the nature of what he was doing at the time because he was under the impact of a serious mental disorder, or that the crime was compelled by or otherwise the direct product of a mental disorder. Being under the impact of such a disorder, by the way, does not exclude the perpetrator from carrying out tasks which require logical and rational thinking.

But people can be seriously mentally disturbed in lots of other ways that don't meet the standard of legal insanity. For instance,the personality disorders which the writer describes are indeed psychiatric disorders, and can potentially lead to all kinds of socially disruptive behavior, including the possibility of mass shootings. There are treatments available for a variety of personality disorders.

The author's recommendations regarding media coverage are based on insufficient evidence and, in any case, don't take into account the impact of internet-based media which are powerful and not easy to control.As far as media goes, a case can be made for just the opposite of what the author is suggesting: give these cases the highest possible visibility, and underscore the critical importance of gun availability and mental illness (not just legal insanity) in the creation of these incidents.

There are different rules for legal insanity in different jurisdictions. In some of them it is an irresistible impulse to do something, even though a person will understand that it is something bad, in others it is a mental disease which rendered a person to be unable to tell the difference between good and evil at that moment, etc. There are 4 different rules if I remember correctly.

You're right that there are different standards in different jurisdictions. I was only making a general statement regarding the range of criteria for insanity defenses. But regardless of the jurisdiction, it is a narrowly defined construct which necessarily excludes lots of mental illness phenomena.

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